I am currently working on my annual Year in Review program. This year it will be with Yaika Sabat from NoveList and just like our program last year, it will be free to view. Sign-up will begin for everyone next week (Learn with NoveList customers already had a chance to signup).
We spend a lot of time crunching numbers and drawing conclusions, giving you analysis and action steps. I will have posts that address some of the content we will be offering here in the blog in the weeks leading up to the February 4th live event, but today I want to share a look forward.
One of the things Yaika and I end our "Year in Review" program with is predictions for the next year, so both of us noticed this post from Book Riot the other day-- "Book Trends Predictions for 2025."
Since I am in the thick of the work of looking back for that I can better move forward, I wanted to repost these predictions because I can vouch for their validity. These are observations based on fact.
Please click through to read them. I have reposted the introduction below -- which is a recap of last year's predictions-- ending with a link to the full article.
Book Trend Predictions for 2025
We’re embarking on a new year of books, inevitably packed with buzzy new releases, surprising publishing news, and readerly fads that will get everyone talking. Here at Book Riot, we can’t help but peek at the tea leaves and guess at what the biggest book trends will be in the coming year. I asked my colleagues at Book Riot and some other folks in the publishing and bookselling world for their book trend predictions for 2025, including what kinds of books will hit bestseller lists, shifts in popular genres, and publishing moves that might impact what we see on the shelves.
An important reminder: Most of the books that will be published in 2025 have been in the works for multiple years. Traditional publishing moves slowly and isn’t typically nimble enough to respond to trends in real-time. That’s why we often see self-published books paving the way for the biggest trends in the reading world. Big marketing budgets and publicity campaigns for traditionally published books can obviously make an impact on what titles readers hear about. But with an increasing number of folks relying on book recommendations from influencers on BookTok, BookTube, and Bookstagram, trends in recent years have sprung up more organically, making them harder and harder to forecast.
Last year, Book Riot contributor Arvyn Cerézo made five predictions for the biggest book trends of 2024. Arvyn had their eye on romance sub-genres like romantasy and speculative romance, which bore out in early 2024, as Rebecca Yarros’ Empyrean series continued to dominate bestseller lists. On the opposite side of trends, Arvyn suggested young adult book sales would continue to decrease. The years of dystopian series like The Hunger Games dominating bestseller lists seem to be behind us, especially as the YA segment of publishing continues to grapple with how to reach both its intended audience (young adults) and the readers who most frequently purchase YA books (adults).
Arvyn also foresaw a year full of conversations about books and artificial intelligence, and we indeed spent much of 2024 debating the usefulness and ethics of generative AI in the publishing industry. I believe those conversations are far from over, and AI will continue to be a hot topic in the book world for years to come. Let’s see what else we expect to dominate bookish conversations in 2025.
Click here to read the 2025 predictions
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